How to Fix Hard, Clumpy Soil

Hard, clumpy soil can spell trouble for certain items that you choose to grow in your garden. Learn how to fix hard, clumpy soil with help from an avid home gardener and garden teacher in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hello, my name is Jessica Craven. I'm a master gardener, and I have my certification in permaculture design. Today, we're going to talk about how to improve hard lumpy soil. So, this type of soil is very heavy, very rich, and it's clay based. How you need to improve it is you need to amend it, amend it, amend it. And how you want to amend it is with organic matter. You can utilize manure. As you can see here, I'm amending it with mulch or wood chips, and I've gone, actually, about a good three to four inches of wood chips. And what I've done for my soil is I've amended it with wood chips or mulch at about eight inches deep. And, over time, it's broken down, and as it breaks down, the carbon goes into the soil and it makes it, not only more nutrient rich, but it also gives it a sponge-like properties, and makes the soil so that it's more able to absorb water. It also enables plants to grow through it easier. As you can see, these plants are growing very well in this very heavy clay-like soil, and they're surviving and thriving on only rain water. When you plant plants in very hard clay-like soil, you need to, again, amend, amend, amend. And how you want to do this is by using compost, organic matter, so that the hard clay soil, mix this in with the compost so that plants are able to have their roots break through, and really really start to build that foundation for the plant. So, again, my name is Jessica Craven, and we've just talked about how to amend your hard lumpy soil. Thank you.